Souls You Can't Save

The Holidays

Okay, just gonna start straight out with it:

I fucking hate the holidays. Just another excuse for my distant family to pester me and make me feel like shit. And, I hate Christmas shopping.

The second reason I hate the holidays is that all my family, biological and adoptive are super Christian in every sense of the word.

My adoptive mom's family is Catholic, but my mom is super cool about the whole religion thing. As long as I believe something, she's chill.

My birth mom's family are the redneck type Christians who only believe the religion so they have a way to justify what they do.

My birth dad was a much looked up to church figure, and his side of the family is basically Amish, so I think you see where that goes over.

But my adoptive dad is a whole other story. His view on everything is that if it doesn't have to do with Jesus or some aspect of Christianity, it's Satan. So I think that pretty much explains why I'm not coming out any time soon.

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Jade had invited me to go laser tagging with her, Nevaeh, Will, Jonas, Mike and Judi.

Judi's real name is Sam Jr, but somehow we got Judi from junior and the nickname stuck.

Last day of school before break, and as soon as the bell rang, we busted ass out of there and walked to the grocery store where all the students from our district hang out. Nevaeh, Judi, and Mike couldn't go with us because they had prior activities, but they met us at Jade's later for pizza.

Jade's mom picked us up around 4:30, and after hanging out and playing video games in her basement for a while we heard her brother yell down the stairs.

"Children of the devil, the offering has arrived!"

Her brother is really nice to all of us, but he doesn't treat us any differently than he treats Jade. We all made a mad dash for the stairs, tripping and falling over each other in the process. It must have been very amusing for the rest of Jade's family to watch.

Finally, we somehow managed to get upstairs, scrambling to get the kind of pizza that we wanted. After that dispute was settled, the gang headed back to the basement.

The coolest part about my friends is that we're all chill enough to snuggle on the couch and share clothing inter-gender-ly and it's not weird or anything. So, naturally, Jade, Jonas, and Nevaeh were on one couch, and Mike, Will, and I were on the other. Conserve warmth in the basement, right?

Anyway, Nevaeh and I hate Jade's basement because there's a creepy mirror that reminds us of Occulus in the other room, and it has creepy writing in the dust. We look to the "men" for protection. I don't think any of them would be able to save us from a demon.

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We got to the local arcade, which has been nicknamed unfortunately by us "Sparkles" because my dad called it that when I asked him to go late at night. We played a few rounds of laser tag, and then took a break. Considering the fact that we're all broke as fuck, we just sat in the comfiest looking arcade games we could find.

Although I was having fun, I still felt slightly pissed that Jade and Nevaeh were paying more attention to Jonas than they were to me. Mike, Judi, and Will had made their way to the front counter, trying to bribe the owner that we knew all too well into giving us some arcade tokens for free.

I stomped off deeper into the arcade, taking refuge in a sheltered Star Trek game to seethe in my rage a little longer. We all knew that Jonas was bi too, but society thinks that it's cooler to have a slightly gay guy friend than it is to have a slightly lesbian girl-friend.

I sat there for about 5 minutes before Will popped his head into the compartment. He said nothing, and about 30 seconds later Nevaeh made her way into the closed area. She sat down on the bench with me in a moment of silence before i heard her whisper,
"Celeste are you okay? And don't give me bullshit, because Will and Jade are actually freaking out about you."
I sighed, and looked up at her through my blur of tears.
"Nevaeh, I'm fine. I'm just pissed that I'm being 7th wheeled, which I didn't even know was a thing. Jade is fucking obsessed with Jonas, and there's nothing I can do to get anyone's attention anymore. I wish the first time I tried to kill myself, it would have worked!"
My voice got louder as I went on, though still choked from holding back tears.
All the sudden, Will bursts through the thin curtain separating us from the outside world.
He looks at me, and then Nevaeh, and gives her the coldest stare I've ever seen and simply says,
"Nevaeh, leave. Now."
Raising her hands in mock surrender, Nevaeh exited the game, leaving Will standing in front of me.
"Sit"
I told him, wondering why he hadn't already. I put my feet up on the bench, facing him, and he mirrored my position.
He breathed deeply before speaking.
"You probably figured out that I was eavesdropping, but it's only because I care about you, and I didn't think you'd tell me what was wrong. That's why I went to get Nevaeh. At this point, I can assume two things. One, suspicion confirmed, you totally like Jade, whether you want to admit it or not, and you may or may not like Nevaeh. Secondly, I know you told me before that you tried to kill yourself last year, but from you saying 'the first time' I can only assume there were others. Celeste, I care about you, and so does everyone here whether you believe it or not."
Still pondering the thought, I didn't even notice that he had kissed me on the cheek until after he had got up and left.
When did he get so observant?
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We went outside in the parking lot, waiting for Jade's mom and stepdad Amy and Greg to pick us up. I opened the door with my butt, more focused on my conversation with Nevaeh then the weather, when I was hit with a gust of snow. Looking through the bluster into the parking lot, we saw it.

The first snowfall of winter, 2015.